AT&T profits soar, iPhone largely to thank

Posted in business, industry, apple (July 25, 2007 at 1:08 am)

We already figured AT&T made out like gangbusters considering just how many iPhones it moved as Q2 came to a close, but upping profits by 61-percent ain’t nothing to sneeze at. Moreover, the telco posted a $2.9 billion increase in net income and sales of $29.5 billion, and a key part of those figures came from the 146,000 iPhone activations. Notably, some 40-percent of those iPhone buyers were new to AT&T, which helped to slash customer turnover to a record low (that isn’t likely to be broken anytime soon). Still, these numbers didn’t turn out to impress Wall Street very much, as many apparently had even higher hopes for AT&T’s quarter, and Piper Jaffray & Co. analyst Gene Munster even went so far as to called the amount of iPhone activations “a disappointment.” Tough crowd, huh?